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RAISING SPIRITS

Stories of Suffering and Comfort at Death’s Door

2010

Raising Spirits: Stories of Suffering and Comfort at Death’s Door is the first book to explore care giving at the end of life from a spiritual as well as clinical perspective. It tells the stories of Michael Goldberg’s journeys with religiously-diverse patients, their families, and loved ones as they try to face the challenges awaiting them at life’s edges. In so doing, Goldberg comes to see that “spirituality” need not refer to things occult or otherworldly, but as Raising Spirits makes clear, to things in this world that can at least start to lift our spirits and revive them. The reciprocal process of gaining insight into patients and into oneself is possible, indeed crucial, for all who care for the sick, both lay and professional alike.

The stories are so gripping that you won't want to put them down. Essential reading for all who care for the dying, including their families.”

Nancey Murphy, Professor of Christian Philosophy
Fuller Seminary, author of Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies?

With rare honesty and humility, Rabbi Goldberg welcomes the reader to accompany him into the pain-filled world of patients and families at the edge of life. He overcomes the real world challenges of the hospital or hospice stay to bring a measure of compassion and comfort to those who suffer. Proverbs teaches that, “The heart alone knows its bitterness.” In truth, Goldberg is that rare individual who understands the pain of another's heart and has the ability to ease that pain.”

Rabbi Sheldon Pennes, Director of Spiritual Life at the Los Angeles Jewish Home

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WHY SHOULD JEWS SURVIVE?

Looking Past the Holocaust Toward a Jewish Future

1996

In the fifty years since the Holocaust, the Jewish People have felt one overriding concern: survival. The ghosts of the murdered six million, along with the living generation of survivors, have called out the unifying chant, “never again.” In 1948, this concern found a second focus in the state of Israel, the ultimate refuge of Jews worldwide. But Michael Goldberg finds that these twin pillars of Jewish identity are brittle, and have already begun to crumble; they will not be enough to support or sustain the next generation. The time has come to answer the question: Why should Jews survive? In this provocative book, Goldberg provides a…powerfully argued alternative to the dominant understandings of modern Jewish thought.

Provocative… Goldberg is trying to pull us out of an intellectual box and move the discussion forward.”

The Washington Post Book World

An eloquent, brave call to Jewish covenantal fidelity… Goldberg’s erudite passion deserves the ear of the masses.”

Kirkus Reviews

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Against the GraiN

New Approaches to Professional Ethics

1993

This book challenges current thinking on professional ethics and suggests new ways of looking at ethical issues. The contributors to the volume (Michael Goldberg, Richard P. Vance, Deborah Fernhoff, Nancey Murphy, Theophus H. Smith, Jack L. Sammons Jr., William H. Willimon, and Senator John C. Danforth) are outstanding representatives of their respective professions. In this book, using the categories of religion and narrative as methodological tools, they move readers to a more responsive, hopeful, and truthful conduct of the professions.

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JEWS AND CHRISTIANS

Getting Our Stories Straight
The Exodus and the Passion-Resurrection

1985

This fascinating volume offers bold new insights into what it means to be a Christian or a Jew. We are Christians or Jews, Michael Goldberg maintains, not principally because we embrace different creeds, but because we have gained an understanding of the world from one of two distinct master stories - for Jews, the Exodus; for Christians, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The author demonstrates what each master story ultimately reveals about who God is, what humanity is, and how humanity should therefore act in God’s world.

A welcome contribution both to theology and to interfaith understanding… deserves to be read by laity and scholars alike.”

Jon D. Levenson, Harvard Divinity School

Valuable especially for Christian preachers and pastors.”

William H. Willimon, Duke University

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Theology and NarrativE

A Critical Introduction

1982

Is the use of narrative as a method of doing theology justified? This volume, one of the first critical analyses of the subject, makes a strong case for such theology. Michael Goldberg explores the notion that all convictions are founded in some narrative and looks at the theological implications of biography and autobiography. He does so by considering the works of Carol P. Christ, James H. Cone, Joseph Fletcher, James Wm. McClendon, Jr, James W. Fowler, Will D. Campbell, Elie Wiesel, H. Richard Niebuhr, Hans W. Frei, Irving Greenberg, and others. After carefully examining the meaning, truth, and rationality of narrative theology, Goldberg summarizes its validity and describes ways that narrative might be used for theology in the future.